On April 10, 2019, President Trump signed Executive Order 13868, formally titled "Promoting Energy Infrastructure and Economic Growth," establishing a streamlined federal permitting process for energy infrastructure projects. The order directed federal agencies to compress environmental review timelines and coordinate agency approvals for pipelines, electrical transmission lines, and related energy facilities. Rather than invoking new statutory authority, the executive order leveraged existing agency discretion to expedite decisions that would otherwise proceed through standard environmental and interagency review processes, reducing approval periods from what had typically been multi-year processes to accelerated timelines.

The order directly affected pipeline developers, energy companies, and electrical utilities seeking federal permits, as well as communities and landowners along proposed infrastructure routes. Federal agencies including the Department of Energy, Army Corps of Engineers, and Department of Interior faced mandates to compress their review periods and reduce procedural requirements. Environmental organizations and indigenous tribes dependent on affected lands experienced shortened opportunity windows for raising concerns about water contamination risks, land use impacts, and climate implications of fossil fuel infrastructure expansion.

This permitting acceleration represented an early iteration of the Trump administration's broader deregulatory economic strategy. While the 2019 order focused specifically on energy infrastructure, it prefigured the administration's later willingness to use emergency declarations and tariff mechanisms to reshape economic policy with minimal legislative involvement, as evidenced by subsequent actions like the 2026 trade emergency continuation and import surcharge proclamations. The streamlining approach assumed that reducing procedural time inherently served economic growth, a premise that critics argued bypassed genuine environmental risk assessment without eliminating underlying environmental law requirements.

Executive Order 13868 remained active without successful legal blockade during the initial Trump administration, though environmental groups challenged specific permit decisions issued under its authority rather than the order itself. The fundamental question of whether expedited timelines adequately fulfilled statutory environmental review obligations remained contested in agency proceedings and litigation over individual projects. Reversal would require either a subsequent executive order rescinding the streamlining directive or congressional legislation reasserting mandatory review periods, restoring the transparency and community participation mechanisms that accelerated timelines had compressed.